


On Carolina, Epsilon, and Mutual Isolation

by anneapocalypse



Series: The Meta: Essays on Red vs. Blue [4]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Meta, Nonfiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-09-13 02:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16883883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: This is a nonfiction meta essay on Carolina's relationship with Epsilon during season 10 and the Chorus trilogy, and how, while they are positive forces in one another’s lives in some ways, they also keep one another isolated.





	On Carolina, Epsilon, and Mutual Isolation

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr.

[blaze-edge](https://tmblr.co/m0I66BmBBXB6847VQgasFRQ) asked:

> Okay, Anne, question abt your 'AIs always isolate their hosts' post. I've kind of been thinking abt it on and off since I read it, but was it Epsilon that really isolated Carolina from the Reds and Blues? I could totally be missing smth here bc my memory is bad but wasn't she the one that convinced him to go out and find the missing Freelancer tech? I know you said that Carolina didn't stop to get to know everybody until after Epsilon was gone but that was also after everything on Chorus was all wrapped up. No more mercs with Freelancer gear they shouldn’t have, no more Hargrove, no more civil war. Say, if after s10 they’d all actually gone back to Blood Gulch, do you think Carolina would’ve stayed isolated? Genuinely curious abt your thoughts here.

This is a good question and it’s going to be a complex answer, and a long one.

First, I feel like I can’t really answer this without addressing that elephant in the room, the authorial decision to leave Carolina out of the first half of the trilogy. I mean, I could but I’m not going to. Carolina’s isolation from the Reds and Blues during the first half of the Chorus trilogy  _can_  be discussed without addressing the decision to keep her offscreen almost entirely during that time, and I realize that they are two separate discussions; I just want to address both of them.

**So, let’s get the Doylist side of things out of the way first.**  If you’re not here for that please feel free to just skip ahead to the Watsonian section, which will be loudly delineated for your convenience below!

## Authorial Decisions and the Problem of the Epilogue

It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all if not for the season 10 epilogue. Watched in isolation, it’s incredibly obvious that the epilogue was written with  _no_  idea what season 11 would be about. The dialogue that leads into the epilogue suggests  _not_  that the Reds and Blues are stranded on a strange planet, but that they have gone  _home_  to Blood Gulch.

> **Carolina** : What about your teams? What will happen to them? 
> 
> **Church** : Well there’s still one place we haven’t visited. Somewhere we can make a home. 
> 
> **Carolina** : Show me.

And when next we cut back Epsilon and Carolina, it’s the epilogue, now shot in Halo 4, in which Carolina and Epsilon are overlooking a vaguely Blood Gulchy looking canyon as the Reds and Blues run around below.

> **Carolina** : Seems like they’re getting settled. 
> 
> **Church** : Yup. 
> 
> **Carolina** : So I guess everything is finally getting back to normal. 
> 
> **Church** : What passes for normal around here, sure. What can I tell ya? We’re home. I mean,  _they’re_  home.

So anyway, this didn’t happen.

There’s no plausible continuity in which this conversation actually takes place on Chorus after a devastating ship crash in which the Reds and Blues are the only survivors out of thousands, on a planet they know nothing about. The above dialogue has been retconned to the point that there is no way to reconcile it with the canon that followed. This scene was clearly supposed to indicate that the Reds and Blues had returned to Blood Gulch, and Carolina and Epsilon were about to leave on a new mission of their own,  _knowing that the Reds and Blues were home and safe._

It’s not a question of “Is this action in-character,” it’s a matter of “Outside of its intended context, a context that no longer exists, this dialogue straight up does not make any sense.” I am that obnoxious person who will go to just about any lengths to reconcile continuity for the purposes of my own writing, and I am saying here and now: as of season 12 canon, the above conversation did not happen. Like we’re past Recovery One and into season 9 trailer levels of did not happen.

So to answer one of your questions from an out-of-universe perspective: Yes, if the Reds and Blues had actually returned to Blood Gulch, Carolina and Epsilon would still have left--because that  _was_  the original intent. The Reds and Blues  _were_  going to be back in Blood Gulch, and Carolina and Epsilon  _were_  going to leave.

In spite of retconning all the content of that conversation that established the obviously-intended setting, tone, and context of that epilogue, the decision was made to  _keep_  the point of Epsilon and Carolina taking off and leaving the Reds and Blues without saying goodbye. (Without saying a  _word_ , and yet somehow Wash and everyone else seem to be aware they just ran off on their own, instead of being worried they might be, you know, in trouble, or dead.)

And thus we have a season and a half where Carolina and Epsilon are not only shoved offscreen and denied further character development, but the one piece of characterization we  _can_ draw from their actions paints them both in what is almost certainly a  _much_  worse light than that epilogue originally intended.

When they do return--well, we’ll get to that, but I think it bears remembering that Carolina on Chorus is  _so_  detached from the Reds and Blues onscreen that we have discussion spanning  _years_  in this fandom over which team she is actually on, because while blocking fairly clearly aligns her with Blue Team (yes, even on Chorus), she has so few meaningful interactions with other members of Blue Team that in the minds of a lot of viewers, she might as well not be there. And it’s no coincidence that Carolina’s season 13 subplot is almost entirely isolated from the rest of the main cast, and has very little to do with Chorus directly.

And by the time we get to season 13 and Miles starts consciously trying to give Carolina character development, he’s dropping things that, while Feels™-inducing, have not been properly planted throughout the trilogy. Carolina thinking of the Reds and Blues as family is planted very hastily in the beginning of season 13. Her physical gesture of comfort toward Kimball strongly suggests familiarity between them, yet this has not been set up  _at all_ , as they have barely shared screentime or even spoken one on one. And because these elements have not been properly planted, their payoffs are confusing, and become difficult to interpret in-universe, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Even Carolina fighting side-by-side with Wash in “Great Destroyers” comes very much out of the blue, when there has been almost zero interaction between them for most of the three seasons. And this, I think, highlights the greatest narrative tragedy for these characters, which is that neither Epsilon nor Carolina ever get any real resolution with Wash. There is no conversation about their histories, no sharing of their pain, no acknowledgment of the ways they have been hurt and hurt one another. Wash and Epsilon never discuss what happened between them in Freelancer, to the point that we, the viewers, still don’t really know--and Epsilon _dies_  without the show ever giving them that closure. We don’t get to  _see_  Wash’s initial reaction to Carolina being alive, and so we don’t  _really_  know how he feels about it at the time. We see them fight together with near-seamless cohesion at the end of 13, but their relationship lacks a kind of emotional continuity that can only come from letting them acknowledge their shared history directly.

So all of that is why we are where are. From an in-universe perspective, then, what can we take from this mess?

**ALL ABOARD THE WATSONIAN TRAIN, PLEASE MIND THE GAP.**

##  **Here’s what this post is actually about:**

**Carolina and Epsilon’s relationship during season 10 and the Chorus trilogy, and how, while they are positive forces in one another’s lives in some ways, they also keep one another isolated.**

I say “keep one another isolated.” Two critical points here:

  1. It goes both ways.
  2. They’re both already isolated when they meet.



To expand on point 2, by the time Carolina meets Epsilon, she has been isolated for a  _long_  time. She watched her team fall apart around her in Freelancer, was betrayed and attacked by multiple teammates, was left for dead by her own father, and spent several years in hiding before resurfacing to find closure. Carolina’s relationship with Epsilon by no means  _creates_  her isolation. What it does is prolong it, by delaying the formation and reconciliation of other meaningful relationships in her life.

Equally important is Epsilon’s own isolation, though it’s a bit more subtle. [epsilontucker](https://tmblr.co/mgULiRj-p5M10uATpx1uF8A) [pointed out once](http://epsilontucker.tumblr.com/post/116830631539/texelations-replied-to-your-post-i-dont-have) that Epsilon coming to identify as “Church” following his reactivation by Caboose didn’t just happen--it was a process. Epsilon’s struggle is that he both is and is not Church. He takes on the Church identity as bestowed upon him by Caboose. He accepts Caboose’s stories as if they were his own memories (which creates its own problems, notably passing on Caboose’s dislike of Tucker and causing significant friction between Tucker and Epsilon). But he is  _not_  Alpha. Nor does he have Alpha’s attachment to the rest of the Reds and Blues, not right away. Epsilon spends most of season 8 figuring out his own identity and pursuing his own goals--most notably, recreating Tex from his memories--and as recently as the end of season 8, Epsilon says of the others, “You know, they’re not really my friends.” His time in the memory unit, while surrounded by facsimiles of the Reds and Blues, is devoting to resolving his relationship with Tex. And when the Reds and Blues pull him out of the memory unit, he’s not terribly pleased. He only really makes an effort to connect with the others in 10 out of a mistrust of Carolina and Wash, and that connection, as we will discuss, is tenuous.

I want to make it clear here that I don’t believe either of them at any point do anything  _deliberately_ to hurt one another. Epsilon loves Carolina. In fact I think he loves her as dearly as he has ever loved anyone--yes, including Tex. And I think Carolina cares deeply for him too. Relationships can have unhealthy elements without warranting that a-word. This is not an abusive relationship; I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it a  _toxic_  one necessarily, though it might have toxic elements at times.

I would characterize it as an intense and insular relationship, of the sort in which two people may both mirror and intensify some of each other’s bad habits--and in their case, these habits have an isolating effect on  _both_  of them. I’ll stress again that I think the effect in their case (and probably in the case of other human-AI partnerships too, but that’s another post) is reflexive. It’s not just one of them  _doing_  it to the other, consciously or otherwise; it’s the effect of their partnership on both of them.

It’s true that a lot happens on Chorus, and  _all_  the characters are kept busy. But that doesn’t prevent, for example, Wash from having significant moments with Caboose and Tucker, or the Reds having moments with one another. Carolina and Epsilon’s isolation is somewhat unique to them. And it begins long before Chorus.

## Present-Day Season 10

Carolina and Epsilon first connect mid-season 10, when Epsilon, concerned about her plans for the Reds and Blues, covertly follows her to the site of York’s death in hopes of learning more. His plan backfires when he reveals himself accidentally and incurs Carolina’s very justified anger for invading her privacy at a deeply personal moment. But by sharing York’s salvaged logs, Epsilon is able to get Carolina to open up.

This encounter changes both of them. Carolina decides that Epsilon can be trusted, and starts making him her first point of contact. While her relationship with Wash is already rocky, this certainly uh, exacerbates it.

Once Epsilon gets close to Carolina, he discards the connection he’d begun to build with the Reds and Blues almost immediately. He starts riding around in Carolina’s armor and withholding information from the others just as she does. Far from bridging the gulf between Carolina and the Reds and Blues, Epsilon exacerbates the situation by simply jumping over to her side, becoming impatient with the others for not blindly following along. This culminates in the disastrous attempt at a mission briefing in the holochamber, where Carolina resorts to threats of violence to maintain control of the situation, and Epsilon viciously lashes out at the Reds and Blues, alienating everyone, even Caboose.

In this scene we see both Carolina and Epsilon react to a situation that brings up past trauma for both of them. The Reds and Blues rejecting her authority is reminiscent of Carolina’s old Freelancer team fragmenting, losing cohesion, becoming insubordinate, and in a few cases outright betraying her. His companions walking away from something so important to him clearly brings up something painful for Epsilon too, evident especially in the way he lashes out at Wash.

I do want to note a difference in  _how_  they react: Carolina threatens, but she’s straightforward. Epsilon fights  _dirty_. When he’s angry at his friends, he dredges up whatever he can think of to hurt them, and I think this is again, a side effect of the fact that he both is and is not Church. He has the knowledge of their history, but doesn’t yet have the affection that comes with time and familiarity, and that can be a very ugly combination. Though Carolina is stunned to see Wash turn on her, it isn’t Carolina who drags up painful history to hurt him back. It’s Epsilon. Though we’re missing a lot of context for what exactly happened, we know that his removal from Wash wasn’t Wash’s choice, and so there’s a sense of something distinctly unfair about what he says.

“So that's it, you're just gonna turn your back on us? No, no, you're right. You know, I guess I should've seen that one coming. It's not exactly like you're new to the concept, is it?”

Carolina and Epsilon’s past traumas resurface in this scene, and they both react very badly, and hurt the people they care about and who care about  _them_. This is the paradox, perhaps, of this kind of intense and insular relationship. Carolina and Epsilon find that they relate to each other deeply, as they uncover the shared pain of their histories with Project Freelancer and how those histories intersect. And in a very real sense, they do need each other--Epsilon needs a friend he chooses for himself rather than one attempting to mold him into the perfect best friend they want him to be. Carolina needs someone who will go to bat for her even when she is far from being her best self.

But neither of them, at this point, are healed enough or self-aware enough to recognize the harm they are doing others. Rather than balancing each other, they amplify each other’s pain and also each other’s displacement of that pain. They’re both Churches. They share some of the same bad habits. Like shutting people out emotionally, and like lashing out at people close to them when they’re hurt.

And so they lash out at their companions, including the one person in the best position to understand and sympathize with  _both_  of them, the one person who has been supporting  _both_  of them even when they’re hurting him, who does not object until he feels he has no other choice: Wash.

Wash understands what both Epsilon and Carolina have been through in a way the Reds and Blues simply  _cannot_. Whatever he went through with Epsilon, we can only imagine it was deeply traumatic for both of them. Whatever his emotions about Carolina being alive after he thought she was dead for so long, it’s enough that it drives him to want to help her, right up until he simply  _can’t_  go along anymore, and we shouldn’t discount what it probably costs him to stand up to her. Wash  _needs_  resolution with both of them,  _desperately_. But neither of them will allow that resolution to happen, because in clinging so close to each other, they shut everyone else out, including Wash.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. The Reds and Blues show up after all, and help Carolina and Epsilon make it to the Director. It’s made clear, though, that they’re doing this for  _Church_ , not for Carolina. It’s Caboose’s sadness over losing his best friend all over again that prompts Tucker’s change of heart, and then one by one the others follow. Even Wash, it’s pretty clear, goes along not for Carolina  _or_  for Church, but for the Reds and Blues. After all, they gave him a second chance, and if they’ve decided to make this their fight, then he’ll be at their side.

And though no one says it to her directly, Carolina surely knows this. She knows they didn’t come for her.

In some ways, Wash was lucky. The worst things he did were worse than what Carolina did--Wash, after all, actually pulled the trigger. Twice. But what he did was witnessed only by the Reds and Doc. And it’s  _Caboose_  who forcibly adopts Wash into Blue Team--Caboose who knows nothing of what Wash has done, and simply longs for a surrogate best friend. He puts Wash in Church’s armor and calls him  _Church._  Who Wash is and what he’s done is basically incidental.

But  _everyone_  gets to see Carolina at her worst, and so she doesn’t get the kind of forceful adoption Wash does. And season 10 ends, not with Carolina having become one of the Reds and Blues, but with Carolina and Epsilon standing alone--and then deciding to leave.

I start from season 10 because I want to make the point that Carolina and Epsilon are not isolated on Chorus because they leave at the end of season 10. They leave because they are already isolated--because neither of them feel like they belong.

It’s true that it’s Carolina who suggests hunting down stolen Freelancer tech. However, I think what Epsilon says  _before_  she ever makes that suggestion is equally important. Even though practically speaking this conversation has been mostly retconned out of existence, it’s still worth paying attention to because it shows where both Carolina and Church are emotionally following season 10.

“What can I tell you,” Church says. “We're home. I mean,  _they're_  home.”

Even the blocking of the shot reinforces this sentiment. Carolina and Epsilon are standing alone at the cliff’s edge, watching the Reds and Blues from a distance, commenting on how things are getting back to normal  _for them_. And however we might reinterpret or overwrite this dialogue to make it fit with Chorus canon, one thing is clear: neither Carolina  _nor_  Epsilon believe that this is their home, that they belong.

With Carolina, it’s easy to see why: she has not been a friend to them and she knows that even in the end they did not come for  _her_. Epsilon is bit more complicated. Why, after his friends risked so much to come back for him,  _twice_ , does he decide to leave them? I think Epsilon, at this point, still feels that his position on Blue Team has been usurped by Wash. And after the way he treated his friends, I think he still feels a certain amount of shame. He’s not sure  _he_  belongs.

And so the two of them hang back. Neither of them so much as speak to any of the others after the confrontation with the Director. We hear them thank each other for what they’ve come through together, but not the others. They have a conversation in which they reinforce each other’s sense of not belonging, of being unwanted by anyone but each other. And then they leave, and don’t say goodbye--almost as if they don’t really believe they’ll be missed.

Which, as we later learn, is not true.

But I think the ways things end in season 10 leaves both Carolina and Epsilon feeling like they only  _really_  have each other. And this begins a pattern of them sticking to each other while keeping everyone else at a distance.

## Season 12

We get a brief snippet of Carolina and Epsilon’s time wandering Chorus alone, and from these flashbacks we can gain a few insights about their relationship as well as how they’re doing individually. Epsilon’s bullet time sequence, in particular, tells us a lot. We learn that Carolina does not sleep well and has nightmares about Sigma--whose memory is still a part of Epsilon, with whom Carolina shares brainspace. We see Epsilon himself eager to brush off these difficulties, insisting to himself, “She’s fine, don’t worry about it.” We see that he can’t fully control the manifestations of his own fragments, as seen when he has to push away Omega. We see that he gets flustered by the many voices talking at once, even though they’re all him.

And we hear him say that he gets lonely sometimes.

Incidentally, there’s never any clear indication that Carolina knows Epsilon talks to his own fragments this way, or that she can hear him doing it. It’s also worth noting that she doesn’t actually take all of his advice in the ensuing fight (she vaults over the door and uses it as a weapon, rather than staying in cover behind it) but this might be just because they briefly lost connection.

All of this lays the groundwork for the cracks that will start to show in Carolina and Epsilon’s bond in season 13.

It is when Carolina and Epsilon return to the story, and to the Reds and Blues, that we see the continued effects of their prolonged isolation.

It’s clear they still do care about the Reds and Blues. The minute their intel leads them to believe their friends are in danger, Epsilon says, “We have to go back,” and Carolina doesn’t disagree. Yet as soon as they are reunited, Epsilon is calling Tucker a “whiny bitch” for being upset about being left alone and kidnapped by mercenaries.

Initially Carolina largely stays out of their bickering. Soon after they all reunite, she runs off with Epsilon to study the new weapons, rebuffing offers of help. She barely says anything in season 12 that isn’t tactical. The rest of Blue Team’s beef seems to be with Church, and Carolina largely seems to agree, not speaking up to take sides, and no one directs their anger toward her even though she left them just as much as Epsilon did. No one seems to have  _any_  feelings about Carolina, positive or negative; emotionally, it’s almost like she’s not even there.

But this is where we come back to Epsilon’s staggering lack of empathy toward his supposed friends. His behavior toward Tucker in particular is shitty in a way that Tucker absolutely does not deserve. The data transfer disaster at Crash Site Alpha brings the tension between Tucker and Epsilon to a head, when Tucker aborts the transfer early out of fear for all of their lives, and Epsilon explodes at him--insisting he  _knew_  that they only needed a few more seconds, even though a minute before, he said he didn’t know how long it would take.

(Tangent: Tucker’s comment about how Church couldn’t find the zoom on the sniper rifle could  _only_  be about Alpha, therefore Tucker is still trying to apply what he knows about Alpha to Epsilon, and he hasn’t fully grasped the fact that Epsilon has different capabilities than Alpha because Epsilon actually knows he’s an AI.)

It’s not just that Epsilon doesn’t know what Tucker’s been through while he and Carolina have been gone. It’s that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t try to understand, and when Tucker tries to explain, Epsilon insults and belittles him. Once again, Epsilon consistently hits below the belt when he’s angry, lashing out at people who care about him using whatever he knows will hurt them. And as soon as he realizes his behavior is making things uncomfortable with the whole group, he declares that “shit’s getting weird” and runs off with Carolina to avoid dealing with it. Even Carolina sounds exhausted when she announces they’re going to check the perimeter.

Tucker is then guilt-tripped by Caboose into apologizing for basically nothing, because Caboose always takes Church’s side (and the codependent nature of Caboose’s relationships with his best friends could be an essay in itself).

This is the first time (and the only time in season 12) that we see Carolina bring up Epsilon’s behavior. She doesn’t quite call him out, but she does express incredulity that Epsilon never actually  _apologizes_  to Tucker, despite his own conscience (in the form of Theta) telling him he  _should._  Epsilon deflects this  _super hard_  with the whole “We’re dudes” thing, which Tucker then goes along with. Playing his refusal to apologize as a sign of masculinity is, intentionally or not,  _really_  manipulative and really effective against Tucker who is struggling hard with his own insecurities in season 12.

It’s really no surprise that Tucker has already started leaning on Wash as an emotional support as soon as they’re reunited--despite the tension between Tucker and Wash back at the crash site, and despite how he has missed Church. Tucker misses Church right up until he remembers what the present Church is actually  _like._

Which brings us back to Wash, whose distance from both Carolina and Epsilon is perhaps the most glaring of any character. Of course there’s no guarantee that he would have a real conversation with either of them even if they weren’t joined at the brain--he is, after all, not great at “emotional stuff.” But it certainly makes it more difficult.

When Carolina chastises Wash for accepting Freckles from Locus, Epsilon joins in, neither of them quite understanding what Freckles means to Caboose, and what getting him back for Caboose meant to Wash. There’s no question that Carolina and Epsilon  _care_  about Caboose; we see this in the way Carolina (and presumably Epsilon since he runs her armor mods) springs into action on a wounded leg to save Caboose from a pirate. It’s not a lack of caring. But there’s a disconnect there all the same.

In episode 17, Carolina and Epsilon lay out three options for their next step with both armies converging on the capital for a final fight to the death. It’s Wash who comes up with the fourth option of putting the Reds and Blues on the ship home while he and Carolina stay behind, an option Epsilon and Carolina hadn’t yet heard, suggesting the three of them didn’t discuss these plans all together.

Carolina and Wash seem to have no problem  _working_  together, and Wash doesn’t even particularly seem to avoid Epsilon (note how he  _follows_  Carolina off to patrol the perimeter after Epsilon’s outburst in 12.16, knowing full well Epsilon is with her). They just don’t  _talk_. And we see firsthand with Tucker just how impossible it is for anyone to talk to either Carolina or Epsilon privately.

There’s an additional significance to the option Wash presents, in that it very likely represents a worst-case scenario for everyone. While we can’t know for sure, this option seems incredibly likely to get everyone killed--the Reds and Blues by walking straight into a trap, the Freelancers and Epsilon by simply being outnumbered and outgunned. I think there’s a really important message we can take from the fact that they consider that option, and reject it. “Never split the party” is an adventure game truism for a reason. The first  _half_  of the Chorus trilogy involves the party being split into multiple pieces and while we get some great character development out of that for the Reds and Blues, ultimately the goal is to get everyone back together because together they are the strongest. This is an important theme, and comes up even more prominently in season 13.

The cooperation between Tucker and Epsilon to entrap Felix at the end of 12 is a high point, and shows that, however incomplete their reconciliation might have been, their teamwork is vital to their success. It’s the first time Epsilon rides with anyone other than Carolina since season 10. And I think it’s worth noting that it was  _Tucker_  who reached out to smooth things over, not Epsilon--and if Tucker hadn’t done it, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all.

Still, season 12 closes with Epsilon and Carolina celebrating their victory  _alone_ , down at Kimball’s thinking spot and away from the others, for no apparent reason.

It’s clear that Carolina has developed some positive feelings toward the Reds and Blues, but it’s also clear she’s still holding them at a distance--that she still doesn’t really believe herself to be one of them. As for Epsilon, he really seems to consider  _her_  his team, even more than the Blues. Both of them seem to believe, genuinely, that they mostly work better on their own.

It isn’t inherently a bad thing that they’re close. But it also make it very easy for them to emotionally shut everyone else out--after all, they always have each other. They are literally in each other’s heads. Carolina struggles to open up as it is--why should she make the effort to express her feelings to anyone else, when Epsilon already knows what she’s thinking? And Epsilon seems to feel the same, remaining so closed off in his conversation with Tucker that even Carolina notices.

But even if they do only open up to each other, is that really a problem? Well… yeah. For both of them, and for the rest of their team. Epsilon’s friction with Tucker has real consequences. Perhaps if he and Carolina were actually communicating to the others what the two of them pass back and forth automatically in their shared brainspace, Tucker wouldn’t have panicked and aborted the data transfer early. What they’ve missed and what they do not share creates a rift between them and the rest of the team, and that affects how they all work together.

We see even more why it’s a problem in season 13.

## Season 13

Early in 13 we finally do see Carolina forming some connections with the Reds and Blues--not just running missions, but laughing and joking with them. (It’s also worth noting that this is the first time since the reunion that we see them form squads for missions  _not_  based on their Red and Blue teams; Carolina’s out working with Sarge and Tucker.)

This scene shows us that Carolina is getting more comfortable with the group but still has a long way to go--particularly evident when her attempt at a joke goes over like a lead balloon. All this time since season 10 and she hasn’t actually been around the Reds and Blues long enough at a stretch to have picked up on the fact that “bow chicka bow wow” is Tucker’s personal catchphrase. Her sense of humor and desire to be playful is emerging, but she hasn’t worked out all the social dynamics of this group yet.

We can see right from the beginning of this season that something is eating at Carolina. That she’s still pushing herself hard in training might not be particularly noteworthy, but there’s more than just her usual perfectionism behind it. In season 12, she doesn’t really let on just how rattled she is by Felix getting the jump on her; it’s in 13 that we start to see that it’s still really bothering her. She sounds uneasy when Wash talks about them taking care of the mercs, and at the portal she’s eager for a rematch even with a construct of Felix. She needs to find her confidence again.

It’s Carolina’s experience inside the portal that highlights just why she’s so rattled. Separated even from Epsilon and forced to watch all of her friends new and old die, Carolina is forced to face her greatest fear, and face it  _alone_. It’s not just a fear of failure. It’s a fear of letting everyone down, losing everyone she loves.

That fear closes Carolina off. From  _everyone_ , including Epsilon. When pressed about what she saw, she responds with [her primary defense mechanism, anger](https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/115084143316/the-importance-of-carolinas-anger-as-emotional). Though she and Epsilon share a certain amount of brainspace, it’s clear they don’t share  _everything_ , because it’s not until much later that Carolina tells him what she saw.

Epsilon is able to keep things from her, too--despite everything we, the audience, learned about him from his bullet time sequence in 12, Carolina herself does not seem to realize Epsilon is having processing issues until late in 13.

And it’s these things, the things they have kept both from each other and from everyone else, that cause problems for Carolina and Epsilon at a critical point. The intense, insular partnership that has allowed them to shut everyone else out has also allowed both of them to avoid introspection--to avoid being honest even with themselves and with each other. The portal fractures Carolina’s already shaken confidence, and it takes only a few strategic words for Sharkface to seed doubt in her mind. While she and Epsilon argue over strategy, it’s Dr. Grey who comes up with the plan that saves them.

This tension culminates in the disastrous confrontation with Sharkface on the mountain, when Carolina takes his bait and leaves her team behind. I want to recall their season 12 dynamic here--both in the flashback episode and directly following the fight with Felix. In both cases, Carolina and Epsilon both blame  _each other_  for what goes wrong. There’s a playful, teasing element to that, of course. But we can hear a similar tone in their smug banter after Carolina knocks Sharkface down the first time, when Epsilon chides her for stroking her ego and Carolina retorts, “Oh please, like you’re one to talk.” Neither of them are particularly  _wrong_ there, either. But they’re both so busy ribbing each other that neither of them notice Sharkface rising out of the snow--and he gets the jump on both of them.

And as the tide of the battle turns, Carolina panics. I don’t think there’s any other way to interpret her calling for all of her armor mods at once--especially since some of them, like the adaptive camo, don’t really do her any good in this situation. She overestimates Epsilon’s raw processing power, and yes, she absolutely pushes him too hard. Certainly no harder than she pushes herself. But being made out of numbers means Epsilon can’t push through the pain of an injury and deal with the consequences later. When his memory space is gone, it’s just  _gone._

And thus their teamwork breaks down, Epsilon fails at a critical moment, and Carolina falls off a cliff.

This, a near-death experience, is what it takes to get them to share their deepest struggles even with each  _other._

To Carolina’s credit, she’s the one who pushes for a serious talk, and even then, she has to  _pry_  it out of Epsilon. He puts up one hell of an effort to avoid the subject and deflect with humor, something Carolina has never appreciated at tense moments. (You see the same thing with York during the Freelancer seasons.) There’s something heartbreaking about how difficult they both find it to open up like this, because when you come down to it, what’s holding them both back is the very same thing.

They’re  _scared_. That’s what it comes down to for both of them, just  _fear._  They won’t be able to protect the people they care about at the critical moments. They’ll fail. Everyone they love will die, and it will be their fault. Carolina still can’t let herself be emotionally vulnerable in front of the Reds and Blues or even Wash, yet she is so terrified of losing them that instead of standing  _with_  them and fighting alongside them, she throws herself at danger like a human shield.

Carolina’s always been a doer and not a talker. There’s not a lot of setup for her calling the Reds and Blues family. But from another angle, we might say it’s been there in her actions, in her almost reckless protectiveness of them. The only way she knows, perhaps, to show that she cares.

And Epsilon’s not so different. But his terror, I think, is of losing  _her_. Carolina isn’t really anything like the Meta, nor did Epsilon really know much about either the Meta or Maine. But underneath that comparison is simply his fear of losing her--of being unable to keep up, unable to  _protect_  her. And this fear makes a lot of things about Epsilon fall into place--his defensiveness, his fudging numbers, his pushing his friends away--even the abandonment issues we hear in his outburst at Wash all the way back in season 10. Epsilon was  _created_  by loss. It is woven into the very fabric of who he is. He  _can’t_  lose Carolina too, and he can’t admit how scared he is of  _exactly_  that--not even to himself.

This scene is, without a doubt, a huge step forward for both of them. It’s a harsh wake-up call, a sign of how much growing they both still have to do.

And it doesn’t fix things all at once, either. Here’s a hot take: Carolina’s entire second fight with Sharkface is  _tactically_  unnecessary. Hear me out. When Sharkface finds her in the city, Carolina is flanked by Wash and Kimball. It’s true they’re in a hurry. But if we look at what happens in the very next episode, we get a perfect demonstration of the fact that Kimball and Wash could take down Sharkface on the spot with a few seconds of concentrated rifle fire. He’s well within range. Instead, Carolina  _deliberately_  sends them off, choosing to confront Sharkface alone.

I think the real reason for this is less a need to defeat him on her own, and more a desire to apologize and offer mercy. But this also suggests that she doesn’t think Wash will go along with that. A chance to confront their past together could be really powerful for Wash and Carolina, especially if they could agree to try and end it without killing him. After all, both of them fought Sharkface and his grudge is ostensibly against both of them. But Carolina still believes she has to face him alone.

So Carolina and Wash don’t get to share that moment, don’t get to face their past together, and ultimately Sharkface doesn’t accept her mercy and dies anyway.

There’s something really sad about that.

The ride out of Armonia to escape the nuclear blast serves as sort of a do-over for their stalemate at the portal site. It demands a moment of seamless teamwork from Carolina and Epsilon, in order to save themselves and their friends. They succeed, but not without cost, as Epsilon crashes after performing the maneuver.

In a way, this scene also validates Carolina’s feelings as expressed earlier--they  _cannot_  afford not to push themselves, not with so much at stake. Just as Carolina saved Caboose without hesitation even at the cost of reopening her leg wound, Epsilon helps her use the bubble shield to save all of them, even though it pushes him past his own limits. It’s complex moment, one that validates their worst fears, but also their capabilities. And of course, it foreshadows the ending to come.

“Great Destroyers” is a turning point. At long last, Carolina and Wash fight side by side, and their teamwork is near seamless. Though we haven’t seen them talk, or demonstrate much emotional vulnerability to each other, there’s a deep sense of camaraderie and  _trust_  in the way they move together as a  _team_ , proving themselves a match for the mercenaries. It’s significant, I think, that Carolina doesn’t rely too heavily on her armor enhancements during this fight--though Epsilon  _is_  with her, his presence is understated, taking a backseat to her connection with Wash.

It’s a powerful demonstration of the value of teamwork and trust over high-tech equipment, one of the major recurring themes of Red vs. Blue.

Following the destruction of the Purge Temple, Carolina sends Epsilon with the Reds and Blues to the Communication Tower. It’s the last time she ever sees him.

It matters that Epsilon’s sacrifice is not to save Carolina, but to save the Reds and Blues. I think if push came to shove he absolutely would have done the same for Carolina alone, and that’s not in itself a bad thing. But Epsilon, like every iteration of Church, has a tendency to hyperfixate on  _one person_. Like I said above, his greatest fear isn’t losing everyone. It’s losing  _Carolina._  And probably his greatest flaw throughout his arc, in season 10 and in the trilogy, is the way he treats his friends, especially Tucker. That’s why his ultimate resolution comes not from saving Carolina, but from saving Tucker and the rest of his friends--while trusting Carolina to be okay on her own.

The victory at the end of season 13 comes  _not_  from Epsilon and Carolina working alone, but from both of them connecting with their other teammates--Carolina with Wash, Epsilon with Tucker. They win not by working as an isolated pair, but by working with their  _team._  That victory comes at great cost, [as all their victories do](https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/168573499426/the-blood-gulch-chronicles-and-the-tragic-finale). But it is still a victory.

## Conclusions

Overall I think the biggest thing to be taken from from Carolina and Epsilon’s whole arc is that as strong as their bond is, shutting everyone else out actually weakens it, and weakens both of them in turn. They are at their best when they don’t isolate themselves, but form and maintain connections with their whole team.

Season 13 sees both Epsilon and Carolina confront their worst fear, one they share: failing to protect the people they love. And so it’s important that the season closes with both of them overcoming their fear, and successfully protecting the Reds and Blues. But it’s also important that their biggest obstacle in doing so--both facing their fears, and protecting their friends--has been the way they have allowed their relationship to isolate them from their friends in the first place.

Epsilon finds his resolution in sacrifice. Carolina’s isolation does not yet fully resolve in the Chorus trilogy--which is okay, because her story isn’t over. It took us until season 15 to really  _see_  Carolina acting like family with the Reds and Blues, and to see her share a moment of emotional closeness with Wash. But she does get there.

Her relationship with Epsilon is important, and no doubt has affected her profoundly. But it’s not the only important relationship in her life, and shutting everyone else out  _has_  limited her growth. Taken as a whole, I think Carolina’s emotional journal from season 10 to season 15 shows us that her healing cannot be complete without her opening herself up to genuine connection with others as well.


End file.
